Overcoming That Cartier Angst

By Richard C. Morais

Life is full of painful rites of passage that nonetheless open up a world of beauty once the initial unpleasantness is over. I count, in this category, the childhood trauma of swallowing those first couple of funky-smelling Brussels sprouts. Who would have known, as much as I gagged then, that Brussels sprouts would become my favorite vegetable?

Which gets me to Cartier, the jewelry unit of Compagnie Financiere Richemont (ticker: CFRUY). At 52, I have spied the fabled jeweler only from the far side of the street, and then only with eyes wide with male alarm. The jeweler’s aura seemed so intensely feminine and so thoroughly damaging to a man’s wallet, avoidance at all costs appeared to be the only appropriate response. At Christmas, usually a time of peace and tranquility, I have watched helpless and horrified from the sidewalk as Cartier’s bejeweled panthers ­aggressively stalked and took down male prey ambling innocently past the jeweler’s Fifth Avenue window in New York.

But having finally plucked up the nerve to enter Cartier, in this case at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva, I find all that angst was grossly misplaced. Among my many preconceived ideas destroyed is the notion that Cartier sells trinkets that only a woman could possibly love.

Courtesy of Cartier

Rotonde de Cartier Double Mystery Tourbillon

In 1912, Cartier created a “mystery clock,” a mantel clock with hands that floated miraculously in transparent rock crystal, no sign anywhere of cogs, wheels, or oscillating cages. Illusionist Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin—the father of modern magic who had an appetite for levitating ladies—was the inspiration for Cartier’s optical-illusion timepiece known as Model A. It was created by Maurice Couet, a brilliant clockmaker in his 20s who was then an exclusive supplier to Louis Cartier.

This April, Paris-based Cartier will unveil a series of new “mystery” wristwatches for men, called Rotonde de Cartier. In one example, the tourbillon, a cage that swivels to counter the effects of gravity, turns once on its axis every 60 seconds. So what? The tourbillon is visible in a transparent circular cutout within the dial, floating and rotating in clearest crystal, with no apparent sign that it is anchored to a gear train.

If that is not enough, the tourbillon then performs a second rotation, every five minutes, a complication explaining the watch model’s name, Double Mystery Tourbillon. I never knew that Cartier was capable of producing such mechanically muscular watches for men; I always thought it erred on the side of just pretty. The Double Mystery Tourbillon will cost $175,000 in platinum, while a simpler mystery watch will sell for $52,500.

Nor, I discovered, are Cartier’s baubles always priced to induce nosebleeds. While jewelers like Harry Winston (HWD) and Van Cleef & Arpels also have moved smartly into watches, Cartier’s range and volume still trump. This year, Cartier is unveiling 113 different watch models; prices range from $4,400 to $1.8 million.

Consider the “tank,” a classic Cartier design endlessly copied by other watchmakers. The ­rectangular tank watch was created in 1917 for the U.S.’ General John J. Pershing, a token of France’s appreciation for the general’s help in ending World War I. Many of the original tank watches, a Cartier executive told me, are suspected to be hiding somewhere in middle America, which hasn’t stopped Cartier from creating more modern variations. New unisex versions of the Pershing-inspired watch coming out in April will include a Tank Anglaise on a strap. In white, rose, and yellow gold, and sometimes loaded with diamonds, the watches are priced between $9,900 and $60,500.

Cartier’s $260,000 “panther granulation” blew me away. The panther is a Cartier signature, of course, and in this case the cat’s face on the watch’s dial is created by soldering 3,800 tiny gold balls into place using a 2,000-year-old goldsmith technique that mimics a miniature mosaic. It takes a Cartier watchmaker two months to complete one watch. The firm’s “secret” watches, meanwhile, are tiny timepieces discretely hidden in jaw-dropping pieces of jewelry. These, to me, are the quintessential Art Deco creations of my Cartier imagination, but they still stun in their 21st-century incarnations.

An exquisite black panther bracelet for $968,000 is made from onyx, diamonds, and emeralds, plus a fairly new technique of coating white gold in a diamond-like carbon. The dime-size watch here is cleverly hidden in the back of the bracelet. A pillbox necklace in the same materials hides a watch at the bottom of the ­lipstick-shape case and costs $672,000. Cartier’s watches are seriously playful and fun, in short, but you’ll never find that out standing on the other side of the street.

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